Archives for November 2006

Okay, let’s be honest, yesterday’s election was a certifiable, big blue blowout. No, we didn’t get everything we want, but that’s only because we wanted everything. Instead, all we got was Democratic control of the House, Democratic control of the Senate, huge pick-ups in the state legislature, and every single statewide initiative and Supreme Court race going our way. If Darcy Burner and Peter Goldmark had declared victory last night, I would have personally considered the election a clean sweep.

As it is, Peter lost a tough, closely contested race in a district with a huge Republican advantage, and Darcy’s race is still too close to call. Although the numbers admittedly look better for the other side (you’d always rather be up than down,) there are still a lot of ballots left to count, and I’ve heard conflicting analyses about Darcy’s chances, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. If I sound a little sanguine it’s only because nothing that happened last night was a surprise (except, perhaps this,) and because I was so emotionally invested in Darcy’s race that nothing short of a victory party would have made last night complete.

I guess I’m just greedy, because of course I understand that both WA-08 and WA-05 were amazing victories for the local netroots, long before election night. We weren’t supposed to win either of these races — in fact, we weren’t even supposed to make them close. That was the storyline the local media adopted heading into the election year, and that was the storyline we worked so hard to rewrite. Of course the candidates deserve most of the credit, but the netroots played a huge role in making them both viable.

And win or lose, Darcy and Peter both played a necessary role in helping the Democrats retake the House. The 50-state strategy was a team effort, and yesterday’s 30-plus seat pick-up was a team win. Darcy in particular drew an enormous amount of Republican resources into a seat they hadn’t expected to seriously defend. The NRCC made the decision that WA-08 was a priority, and as a result resources were shifted from races that Democrats went on to win.

So before I go on to do any more analysis and gloating I just want to take a moment to thank all of you for your contribution towards changing the face of politics national and locally. This was a historic election for the Democrats and for the nation. And it’s just a hint of what’s to come.

Too little, too late.

Meanwhile, the John McCain death-watch begins.

Initiative 920 lost, and it lost huge. The current numbers show I-920 barely passing in only three Eastern Washington counties, and failing statewide by 61% to 39%, an embarrassing 22-point margin that will only grow once the bulk of King County’s ballots are added to the mix.

This was more than a repudiation — it was a political ass-whooping… an electoral “fuck you” to estate tax repeal, its rhetoric, and the selfish multi-millionaires who backed it.

In arrogantly pushing to repeal Washington’s estate tax, proponents like Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen have set their cause back a decade or more. If the state GOP wants to continue to champion the cause, more power to them. Or rather, less power, for repudiating the overwhelming will of the voters is a sure fire path towards cementing the kind of stunning legislative losses they achieved last night. And if Frank or Martin or one of their wealthy buddies wants to sink more millions into yet another hopeless initiative, well… a fool and his money are soon parted, and as long as that adage holds true, voters don’t seem to mind if a tiny fraction of the money ends up in state coffers.

Had I-920 passed last night, even just squeaking by, we would have surely seen copycat initiatives popping up on ballots nationwide. Now that seems unlikely. But should estate tax repeal forces seek to cherry-pick a more millionaire friendly state, the No on I-920 campaign has provided a blue print for countering their carefully constructed, Luntzian, “death tax” rhetoric.

With the Democrats now in control, estate tax repeal is also as good as dead at the federal level, and I-920’s crushing defeat will give House and Senate leaders no incentive to moderate their position. In fact, by arrogantly overreaching, I-920’s backers may have actually damaged efforts to reach a compromise that would have significantly raised exemption levels on both the state and federal tax. Certainly, Blethen should expect no support from Sen. Maria Cantwell, who lost the Times’ endorsement due to her refusal to vote for repeal, yet still won reelection by an 18-point landslide.

If there was ever an example of editorial impotence, this is it.

I’m mainlining caffeine right now in an effort to jump start my own election analysis, but I thought I’d start by stealing some from The New Republic:

The Democrats have won back the House. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), nearly tripped over himself on the way to the microphone to claim the credit. In fact, while the tidal wave in the House looks like a bit of strategic genius by Emanuel–and pundits are starting to call it that way (Howard Fineman on MSNBC noted that the Democrats even picked up a seat in Kentucky, where the 3rd District candidate was John Yarmuth–“Emanuel’s fourth choice!” Fineman exclaimed, as if in awe of the power possessed by Emanuel’s mere table scraps)–in race after race, it actually represents the apotheosis of forces Emanuel has doubted all long: the netroots.

In two competitive House races in the Bluegrass State, Emanuel’s first choices lost by 9 and 12 points. In the 2nd District it was Colonel Mike Weaver, the cofounder of Commonwealth Democrats, a group of conservative Democratic state legislators. In the 4th, it was Ken Lucas, a former congressman whom Robert Novak recently called “moderate conservative” in a column Emanuel’s “recruiting coup” in coaxing Lucas out of retirement. Both were the kind of candidates Emanuel has favored in his famous nationwide recruiting drive. Yarmuth, meanwhile, was founder of the state’s first alternative newspaper, said things on the campaign trail things like “the No Child Left Behind Act … is a plan deliberately constructed to create ‘failing’ schools,” and called for “a universal health care system in which every citizen has health insurance independent of his or her employment.”

It was a pattern repeated across the country. New Hampshire’s 1st District delivered Carol Shea-Porter, a former social worker who got kicked out of a 2005 Presidential appearance for wearing a T-shirt that said turn your back on bush. That might have been her fifteen minutes of fame–if, last night, she hadn’t defeated two-term Republican incumbent Jeb Bradley. For the chance to face him, however, she had to win a primary against the DCCC’s preferred candidate, Jim Craig–whom Rahm Emanuel liked so much he had the unusual move of contributing $5000 to his primary campaign. Shea-Porter dominated Craig by 20 points–and then was shut out by the DCCC for general election funds.

[…] John Hall is poised to become the Democrats’ version of Sonny Bono–a former environmental and anti-nuclear activist and co-author of the hit 1970s hit “Still the One,” he just won New York’s 19th District House seat. Chris Carney, now heading to Washington to represent Pennsylvania’s 10th, beat beleaguered incumbent (and alleged-strangler) Don Sherwood. “Until Carney was ahead by double digits,” complained Howie Klein of DownWithTyranny, a blog that backed his candidacy, “Rahm wouldn’t take his phone calls.” Larry Kissell, a high school social studies teacher, is, as of this writing, in a statistical dead heat with an incumbent Republican from of all places, North Carolina. Says Klein: “If Rahm had a little bit of foresight to see this guy was for real, and to see that he was a candidate who could have won, a little bit of money would have made all the difference for him.”

[…] The thing all these successful candidates share in common is backing by the same dirty-necked bloggers and netroots activists that pundits have been calling the political kiss of death. Yarmuth, Shea-Porter, Hall, and Kissel–in addition to Democratic pickups Jerry McNerney in California, Joseph Sestak and Lois Murphy in Pennsylvania, Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota, Bruce Braley in Iowa, Kristin Gillibrand in New York, and Senators-elect John Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio–were all beneficiaries of a PAC called Blue America, a joint project of the blogs Firedoglake, DownWithTyranny, and Crooks & Liars. “Most of the candidates we support come directly from our readers,” Klein says.

Some of their chosen beneficiaries were hopeless and remained so. The bloggers say that’s the risk you take when you’re trying to build a party infrastructure for the long term. Others were hopeless, however, only until the netroots-types got their mitts on them. […] The bloggers, blunt as they may be, think they have a better plan for building a lasting Democratic majority. Last night’s results suggest the rest of us should start taking it seriously.

The netroots won yesterday, and we won big. There will be ups and downs, but yesterday was the first step towards rebuilding the Democratic Party and a new, national progressive majority.

There’s too much to write about, and I’m just too damned tired.

The polls just closed in parts of Indiana and Kentucky, and I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve the first night of Chanukah. I’ll be starting my evening around 5PM at the Montlake Alehouse where our Tuesday night gathering of Drinking Liberally will be meeting a few hours early to watch the East Coast returns, and I invite you all to join me. I’ll then set out party-hopping, before ending the night in Bellevue with Darcy Burner.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be blogging throughout the night, so I think I’ll just start this running thread where I can post occasional updates and observations. Tune in throughout the night for what I hope to be some well-deserved gloating.

3:43 PM
Dems are pretty optimistic in Louisville, where John Yarmuth (D) is leading Rep. Anne Northup (R) in KY-03 51.1 to 47.6 with 15 percent of precincts reporting. Interestingly, exit polls showed Yarmuth winning by, tada… 51-47.

Why am I so interested in KY-03. Well, it’s the only competitive race reporting, but it’s also a bit of bellweather as it only recently moved into the “toss-up” category during the last couple weeks, and Hotline only rated it the 36th most competitive House race. If Dems are comfortably beating incumbents in Kentucky, well… we’ll see.

4:07 PM
More exits polls show close Senate races in Tennesee, Missouri and Arizona, and the Dems running away most everywhere else. (Lieberman is apparently winning by 5 points in CT… I’m not sure what party he is.) And… Vermonters have just elected our nation’s first Socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders.

4:31 PM
I’m heading to the Alehouse. So far, I’ve heard nothing that indicates we aren’t in the midst of a big blue wave. We’ll know a lot more over the next hour.

5:31 PM
I’m at the Alehouse, and they just called the PA Senate seat for Bob Casey. Rick Santorum has been retired. Congratulations Dan Savage, we owe it all to you.

5:55 PM
I’m sharing a pitcher of beer with Stefan Sharkansky. He bought. I guess I’m a beer whore.

As for the election, Ken Blackwell didn’t win the governor’s race in Ohio. So I guess we still have a democracy afterall.

7:02PM
Still at DL. Santorum just conceded. The crowd here broke into chants of “dog on man.”

10:14PM
Nationally, it’s a wave. The Dems have taken the House, and most likely the Senate. I’m at the Dem party at the Sheraton, and everbody is hopped, but I’m heading out to Bellevue where Darcy is currently behind in a tight race. I’ve got no idea where any of the numbers are coming from, so I don’t know what her prospects are, but as always, I’d rather be ahead than behind. Cantwell won, the bad initiatives lost, and we’re picking up a bunch of seats in the state legislature. Darcy would be the icing on the cake… but the cake’s pretty damn tasty on its own.

I got my heart broken in 2004, believing the exit polls. But I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment. Here’s the first leak to come my way:

Democrats leading:
Virginia (52-47)
Rhode Island (53-46)
Pennsylvania (57-42)
Ohio (57-43)
New Jersey (52-45)
Montana (53-46)
Missouri (50-48)
Maryland (53-46)

Republicans leading:
Tennessee (51-48)
Arizona (50-46)

Don’t trust ’em, but I’d rather the numbers show we’re up than down.

Flooding is hampering Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts throughout the state, and the state Democratic coordinated campaign needs more volunteers. If you’ve got a couple hours to spare, give your local office a call and help take our nation in a new direction.

COORDINATED CAMPAIGN OFFICES

AUBURN
240 Auburn Way S, Suite 1A
Auburn, WA 98002
253-333-2148
253-939-9452

BELLEVUE
12443 Bel Red Road, Suite 310
Bellevue, WA 98005
425-454-2509

BELLINGHAM
215 W Holly Street, Suite B28
Bellingham, WA 98225
360-738-4681

EVERETT
2812 Lombard Avenue, Suite 106
Everett, WA 98201
425-259-2985

OLYMPIA
506 Columbia Street SW
Olympia, WA 98501
360-357-6274

SEATTLE
1848 Westlake Avenue N
Seattle, WA 98109
206-352-3963

SILVERDALE
3100 NW Bucklin Hill Rd. Suite 226
Silverdale, WA 98383
360-698-6856

SPOKANE
151 S Washington St
Spokane, WA 99201
509-838-1718

TACOMA
711 St. Helens Avenue, Suite 100
Tacoma, WA 98402
253-573-2841

TRI-CITIES
2634 W. Bruneau Pl.
Kennewick, WA 99336
509-735-3037

WENATCHEE
33 North Mission — P.O. Box 1061
Wenatchee, Washington 98801
509-664-6621

VANCOUVER
1717 Broadway St.
Vancouver, WA 98663
360-695-0821

YAKIMA
1210 W. Lincoln Avenue
Yakima, WA 98902
509-453-0115

Darcy Burner 52.4%, Reagan Dunn 47.5%. (Of course, I’m talking about 2008.)

If you encounter any problems or unusual experiences at the polls today, or simply have observations about turnout or GOTV, please report them in this thread.

And PLEASE stay on topic. I will delete intentionally off-topic comments and deliberate trolling.

Local Democrats have a lot of reasons to feel awfully damn confident about today’s election, but the weather is not one of them. Higher turnout generally favors Democrats, lower turnout Republicans. And heavy rain? Well, that’s never good for Democratic turnout.

But don’t take my word for it. On this soggy Election Day let’s harken back to the sage advice of state Sen. Luke Esser (R-Nervous), who wrote a column on this very same subject in the UW Daily, way back on Nov. 3, 1986, the day before that year’s midterm election.

Blame us for the rain tomorrow.

Forget what the weatherman says, and plan on wearing those galoshes Tuesday. You better trust us. We’re taking care of everything.

There’s a very good reason why we have decide to rain on your parade. It’s just politics. And taken the right way, politics can be a lot of fun, almost as fun as sports.

We all remember those great political traditions — whistle-stop tours, kissing babies, voter fraud, dirty tricks, and voting a straight Republican ticket.

Of course, no honest person would be content to blindly vote a straight Republican ticket. That’s because a few of the G.O.P. candidates aren’t conservative enough to deserve the honor of sharing party affiliation with the likes of President Reagan.

Like any sport worth its salt, in politics you have adversaries, opponents, enemies. Our enemies are loudmouth leftists and shiftless deadbeats. To win the election, we have to keep as many of these people away from the polls as possible.

Now your average leftist loudmouth is a committed individual and can almost never be persuaded to ignore his constitutional rights. The deadbeats, however, are a different matter entirely. Years of interminable welfare checks and free government services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place.

Many of the most successful anti-deadbeat voter techniques (poll taxes, sound beatings, etc.) that conservatives have used in the past have been outlawed by busybody judges.

The only means of persuasion left available to us are Acts of God, who we know is exclusively on our side. I’m talking about seriously inclement weather. I want Biblical floods and pestilence. I will settle for rain, sweet rain. The deadbeats won’t even go out in the rain for their welfare checks (they send one of their social workers to pick it up). There’s no way they’ll vote if it’s raining.

Unfortunately it hasn’t been raining nearly enough lately. Some October days were positively balmy. That means the clouds need a little help.

Borrowing some of the great traditions of the natives of our area, Washington conservatives will gather in Bellevue tonight to hold their first annual Rain Dance. Those interested can gather in the northeast parking lot of Bel Square (corner of N.E. 8th St. and Bellevue Way) at 8 p.m.

Working together, we can assure that only people of substance will vote tomorrow. Remember to bring your dancing shoes tonight and don’t forget those galoshes tomorrow.

Ah well, some things never change… that is, other than Esser’s hippie beard and tub-o-lard college physique. (And for those of you who don’t accept Esser’s denial that he is gay, just take a look at that wardrobe. Have you ever seen a gay man with such an utter lack of fashion sense?)

Esser doesn’t just want to suppress the Democratic vote, he’s proud of it. And while I suppose his column may have been a feeble attempt at humor, many a feeble truth is said in feeble jest. In fact, if one didn’t know better, one might think that this was a satirical column written by Democrat pretending to be a Republican.

Poll taxes, beatings, voter fraud… young master Luke apparently thought all that was funny. But then, what’s the big deal when your enemies are just a bunch of loudmouth leftists and shiftless deadbeats?

So if you haven’t yet voted, and you’re not sure if you really want to trudge through the rain to cast your ballot, just remember that fat, hairy Luke and his Republican buddies are laughing at you. Then go to the polls and kick the bastards out.

By now most of you have heard about the NRCC’s harassing robo-calls which have been inundating as many as 50 districts nationwide. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has the best explanation, so I might as well just repeat most of it here.

Most of the call’s script is a fairly standard attack robocall, a series of Republican talking points aimed at the Democratic congressional in a particular district. Nothing particularly noteworthy. The key is the introduction. The lead into the call starts with the speaker saying ‘I’m calling with information about’ Dem candidate X. Then there’s a short pause.

At this point, you know it’s an annoying robocall, so a lot of people just hang up. If you hang up then, you think it’s a call from the Democratic candidate.

Second, the repetition. And this part is the key. If you don’t listen through the whole message, the machine keeps calling you back, often well in excess of half a dozen times with the same call. It only stops if you listen all the way through.

As you can imagine, that’s driving a lot of people through the roof.

In other words, the Republicans behind the calls win either way. If you keep hanging up, you think you’re being harassed by the campaign of the local Democratic House candidate. If you give up and listen all the way through, you hear the political attack. The true source of the call, the NRCC, the GOP House campaign committee, is only revealed at the end of the call.

(Federal regulations dictate calls be identified at the top of the call.)

Third, and for this there is as yet only anecdotal evidence, many of the calls seem to be going out overnight or during, say, a major sporting event in the given district.

These sorts of operations are supposed to glide under the radar, having maximum impact with minimal press attention.

And that’s pretty much how it worked.

People only started catching on mid-late last week as Democratic campaign after campaign started fielding complaints from voters about robocalls their campaigns weren’t even making. Even then, individual campaigns dealt with it mainly on their own. Only over the weekend did different people start putting the puzzle together.

It’s impossible to say how many voters out there are pissed off because they think they’re being phone-stalked by the local Democratic candidate. And there’s no way to tell just what the effect will be at the ballot box. But the intention is clear: suppress the Democratic vote by harassing voters with repetitive phone calls and deceiving them about who it is that’s calling them.

Remember, this is the same crew that pulled a not dissimilar phone scheme in 2002 which resulted in multiple felony convictions. This time they’ve just taken it nationwide. This is their strategy.

This is a big story that’s only gotten minimal coverage in the press, when it should have generated above-the-fold headlines. The NRCC doesn’t care that this is dishonest. They don’t care that this undermines our democracy. Apparently, they don’t even care that this is illegal.

I understand why some people still vote Republican, but for the life of me I can’t understand how they can do so with pride.

Under 50, tied with the challenger. Not a place a Republican incumbent wants to be the day before the big blue wave hits.

Among those poll respondents who have already voted: Burner leads by 8 among those who tell SurveyUSA they have already voted. Reichert leads by 5 among those who tell SurveyUSA they are certain to cast a ballot before polls close, but who have not yet done so. 38% of respondents have already voted; 62% have yet to.

What does that mean? Well, you don’t even have to do the math to see that Reichert would need to win over 5% of the uncast ballots to win the election.

It is interesting to note that in the previous poll Burner led by 8% with the 25% of respondents who said they had already voted, and now with 38% of ballots cast she still leads by 8%. Not having anything but intuition to back this up, it always struck me that a survey of how people actually voted should be more accurate than a survey of voter intent.

If I were Reichert, I’d be awfully nervous.

Rep. Dave Reichert has run out of money, and is pleading with supporters for last minute donations to fund his GOTV efforts.

“This race will be very close: We have had to spend our campaign coffers down to nothing and we still have critical Election Day activities that we must pay for. Can you help Dave in the final push by making a contribution?”

Eh. I wouldn’t worry so much about Dave’s campaign shutting down a day before the election. His party doesn’t seem to have much of a problem engaging in deficit spending.

The Washington Realtors PAC has taken quite an interest in the 48th Legislative District race between Republican Bret Olson and Democrat Deb Eddy, spending over $28,000 stuffing mailboxes on Olson’s behalf. One of their major campaign themes? Olson will solve the region’s traffic problems.

A recent mailer (you can see it here, front and back) features a picture of typical Eastside congestion, with the following text:

With the average commute getting longer every year, it cuts into the time we have to spend on the important things, like our families. Now, traffic is threatening our economy and our quality of life.

That’s why we ask you to vote for Bret Olson in the upcoming election. As our Representative Bret Olson will work for transportation solutions that give us more quality time with those who matter most.

Uh-huh. Only take a closer look at the picture of that Eastside traffic jam.

So… where exactly on the Eastside is Kirkwood Rd and Wilcrest Dr? Um… Houston. Texas.

Oh, and by the way, not only isn’t that freeway in Olson’s district, I’m pretty sure this isn’t Olson’s wholesome, healthy family either.

As for Olson’s “transportation solutions,” apparently they include passage of I-933, which Olson endorses, and which would lead to unregulated, unchecked suburban sprawl throughout the 48th LD and the rest of the state. Not that this would have much of a negative impact on local traffic. In Houston.